position S10 04.000 E161 23.000
Ocean Rival Journey Log
Adam Power Diana Power
Mon 24 Jun 2019 21:51
Monday 24th June
A 2nd lovely calm and quiet night
at anchor. Not a ripple on the water in the morning. We rowed
ashore for a walk and were soon found by Nando and met his red
mouthed beetel nut chewing grandmother, jolly aunt Mary and her
pretty daughter who look after the concrete framed warehouse. This
little island seems to have been chosen for special development
with a new high school on the hill which we asked Nando to show
us. On an elevated site overlooking the bay an impressive array
of buildings accomodate 300 pupils -most boarders comming in from
other islands. Perhaps the logging money is doing some good.
The school was still quiet after
the weekend as the pupils return during the day on monday. Nando
is a pupil and his older brother is a doctor in Honiara and older
sister a teacher at the school. His younger brother came to visit
the boat last night in his canoe.
Mary gave us a pumpkin and some
french beans from her garden- a great treat for supper, and Nando
offered to fetch us some fresh coconuts. He pulled up a banana
sapling and converted it to rope by stripping it under a stick.
Then rolled that into a loop and tied it with grass. Placing his
feet in the loop so that they were held against the trunk he
jumped up the tree in about 10 leaps and around a dozen coconuts
rained down as he stamped them off the top.
We took 8 which has about as much
as the dinghy could manage and I invited Nando to see the boat and
give him a notebook and pens, the last of my gift supplies. We
dished out biscuits and cake to Nando and his brother who had
returned in his canoe and a couple of lads in another canoe and
Nando had some tea and showed me how to open a coconut with about
three or four accurate swipes of my machete. Nando was the strong
silent type- but did say he liked science best and would like to
be a doctor like his brother. That seems to be the career of
choice for ambitious young men as a couple of others had expressed
the same thought.
After rowing Nado back to the
beach we set off for Honiara at midday, picking up a little breeze
to tempt us to switch off the engine for most of the day.
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